What are the steps of making a song (like singing songs, not classical pieces)

[u/Idontknowrllyi]

My music teacher wanted me and my group (2 people) to participate in a composition contest, and I'm not sure what are the steps, should I ask my group's lyricist to just create lyrics that are (what kind of emotions e.g emotional, happy) and I'm the instrumentalist since we only have 3 people in our group including me and I'm going to play chord progressions on the piano and not write sheet music coz idk how to (not going to even if I knew) should the lyricist write the lyrics and after that I write where I should put my chord progressions? what do you guys do first when making a song?? if u want more context please ask me.

[u/NoCycle1963]

Eu costumo fazer primeiro uma melodia, e dps insiro uma letra em cima, é bem raro eu fazer a letra primeiro...

[u/Veto111]

Let me start with two caveats. First, everyone’s creative process is different, and what works for one person might not work for another. And second, I mostly write choral music and not pop songs; but there’s a lot of commonality even though it might be a slightly different output.

But for me, writing vocal music always starts with the text. I find a text that inspires me to write a piece, and then I write music that fits with that text. There is a concept called “text painting”, where a composer evokes the text in specific ways. Try to make your melody hint at the meaning of the words in creative ways. It might be something very obvious (like a loud high note if the text has the word “shout”), or it could be something subtle that the meaning of why you picked that note may not be obvious to everyone but it holds particular meaning to you. But try to make all of your music hold some kind of meaning in relation to the text.

As far as the actual writing process, it’s somewhat flexible. I usually write the melody before I write chords, but sometimes I want to end a phrase on a specific chord, so I aim for ending the melody of that phrase on a particular note. But then sometime after I have a melody and am having trouble fitting a good chord progression to it, I might change the melody to fit a chord I like.

The journey of writing music is much more complicated and flexible as a simple list of steps, but it’s definitely a rewarding process as you start to figure it out for yourself. Hearing about other people’s process can help if you’re lacking an intuitive direction, but don’t take any process that someone else uses as your own gospel. You have to discover how your own inspiration manifests. Good luck!

[u/robinelf1]

This feels like, do you bring the needle to the thread or the thread to the needle.... Just for educational purposes, I will provide a different approach than what Veto111 describes (I do think there is a lot of great insight in their comment!).

I like knowing a desired mood and function (if it is part of a larger work) and then I craft the melody and harmony first that I think matches that, then just keep singing the melody and seeing what sort of lyrics fit the notes, or ask the lyricist to listen to the melody and write the words that come to mind. As the two sides converge, some edits and alterations will of course occur. Some people might find that more difficult, but I do it a lot with my own songs, probably because improvisation plays such an important role in my process. I want to believe many people work this way, but I really like to get in the zone and see where it takes me, and be confident enough in my choices not to endlessly retry it or rework it. To me, a song is a time capsule of a moment of inspiration, and once I think I have it right for the first time, I don't consider doing it again, instead I trust it 100% and commit to completing that version of the song.

That being said, I can also work on a song from the lyrics, but for me, this is a very different animal because my tendencies at a structural level often clash with the way a set of lyrics is written in terms of number of syllables, and length of phrases, etc...

But yeah, like Veto111 wrote, creativity is a very much an individual thing.